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Friday, January 8, 2010

All throughout 2009, I kept track of each of my grocery and household spending receipts. At the end of each month I would tally what I had spent and what I had saved (along with how many coupons that I had spent and how many FREE items that I had received).

Last January my family budget had been set at $100/week, and I spent every last cent! During the Spring of 2009 I began spending less and less of my weekly allowance while still being able to purchase the items that we use most frequently and continue building my stockpile.

By early summer I decided to drop my weekly budget to $85/week and refocus my spending by purchasing less 'stuff' that I could just get inexpensively.

Little by little I've been learning to widdle away my needless spending. Here's the recap of my spending for 2009.

*I also received $610 in rebates during 2009.There is a TON to learn from tracking your spending.

Month after month I could look for ways to curb my spending, if I already had plenty of a specific item in my pantry/freezer, I could skip purchasing more.

I've noticed that during the months that I spent the least, I also saved the least! Spending less money also meant that I was spending less time shopping in the stores! I want to spend coupons to make life better for my family (spend less on necessities and have more for saving and spending elsewhere) instead of spending too much time and too much money in the stores.In TWENTY-TEN, my plan is to spend, on average, $50 per week. Hopefully, over the course of the month, I'll keep my spending at or below $200. Time (and tab-keeping) will tell!

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comments:

1. If you didn't use coupons, do you think you would have spent $19K on all of these things? I find I can save a lot if I buy things I don't need. I'm not at the point where I am donating....which comes to my second question...

Hi Laura - I'm encouraged to see how much *less* you could spend when you put your mind to it. I spent $100/wk last year, but we have *so much* food! I am sure I could do better. I'm trying for $50/wk in January, and after that experiment I'll likely adjust the budget to somewhere between 50 and 100. I am getting better at spending less time in stores, too.

How do you calculate how much you are saving? For instance, Meijer has three rows up at the top that list your savings, are you counting the grand total that the receipt says? Because in that seems to be savings from the sales they had that week. Want to try to start tracking mine as well but wanting to use a method that is accurate.